ShanghaiMamas

Summer daze

Tuesday, August 5th 2008

By Katrina Beikoff*

His driving was wildly erratic, his sense of danger frighteningly out of whack, but I can almost see now that his logic made perfect sense.

It was in Phuket and we nervously asked our driver why he kept crossing to the wrong side of the road, only narrowly missing on-coming traffic that seemed determined not to give an inch.

Simple, said the driver.  It was summer.  Everyone wanted to drive in the shade.

Summer heat can do odd things — to the body and mind.

I am beginning to understand now the confused and bewildered looks our family attracts when we mention that we moved to Shanghai from our home barely two minutes from the beach.  And that we had no intention of going home for the summer (never mind that it’s actually mid-winter in Australia at the moment, with the temperatures in our neck of the woods plummeting to a chilly 10 degrees Celsius — 50 degrees Fahrenheit — in the cold depths of night).

Save for a short break, which now seems so long ago, we have been happy to dig in for the seemingly never-ending heat of Shanghai.

And we’ve had to adapt.

We’ve developed our own version of Phuket madness.  On even short walks we will cross the street numerous times to catch the shade of buildings, awnings, umbrellas, trees, even street stalls offering knickknacks I normally go to great pains to steer the kids away from.

Unlike in Australia,  there’s no sprinkler in the backyard to jump under when it just gets unbearably hot in the house or on the verandah, so we’ve become water-logged spending time in the bath.

I hail from a long line of air-conditioner avoiders, and have realized I have begun inflicting similar suffering on my family. I recall the joy at which we welcomed our first family car that came equipped with air-conditioning.  And my fury as my father switched it permanently to off and suggested we wind down our windows to catch the breeze. Even though it was only a 20 minute drive to our annual summer holiday beach-side camping site, the heat sapped the ability to complain from us from the moment we piled into the car.  I now understand the source of my father’s smirk — it was not so much the sinister pleasure at our suffering, but the glee with which he welcomed our heat-stressed silence.

Likewise, the summer of afternoon sleeps in Shanghai have been bliss. Children, and their mother, can only sap up so much heat and excitement in one morning and must eventually succumb to the lure of cool, crisp sheets and an afternoon of heat-free hanging out (albeit it largely without air-conditioning).

Our Shanghai summer has also taught us that there’s not much in the way of snacks that can’t be frozen.  My daughter, going through a troubling period of vegetable refusal, offered me a deal.  She would eat her broccoli if I made it into an ice block.  And, as though a four-year-old could understand the notion of saving face, proceeded to eat it (argh!).

The summer has been a time of bonding with new friends as we seek shelter from the heat in each other’s houses.  It has been a chance to visit indoor attractions we might not normally have included on our itinerary — a cheap favorite being the dusty dinosaurs of the Shanghai Natural History Museum on Yan’an Dong Lu. And it has been a time when we can delight at the diversity of the seasons — which is so different from the sub-tropical experience of our homeland.

It will be with happiness that we will welcome back all of our Expat friends who disappeared to cooler climes or returned home for the duration of the summer.  But it is without a complaint that we’ve ‘endured’ staying behind in Shanghai.

* Katrina Beikoff is a Shanghai-based writer and mum-of-two.  She writes fortnightly for www.shanghaimamas.com.cn and monthly for the Shanghai Daily newspaper.  Her next column will appear at shanghaidaily.com on Monday, August 11.  Go to Opinion and Foreign Perspectives.

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